A

The Edison Rotary Mimeograph No. 76

 

The A.B. Dick Company was founded in 1884 in Chicago, Illinois, by Albert Blake Dick.

 

Written material then was still predominantly done on a handwritten basis. Because it was no such machine as a mimeograph, it became necessary to invent one.

 

It was Thomas Alva Edison's ideas and his "electric pen" was the key in the merger of concepts that determined the form of the world's first duplicator the "Edison-Dick Mimeograph."  A few years later, experimenting with a file and waxed wrapping paper, Dick discovered the mimeograph process.  .

 

By 1900, the A.B. Dick Co. began to sell rotary mimeographs bearing the Edison name.

 

The A.B.Dick Model 75 Rotary Mimeograph was released in 1904. Capable of producing 50 copies a minute, it set the stage for ever increasing capacity in Dick products. The Edison Rotary Mimeograph No. 76 followed in 1909.

 

In 1909, A. B. Dick claimed that the Edison Rotary Mimeograph could produce 2,000 perfect copies from a stencil at a rate of 45 to 50 copies a minute. For printing, the prepared stencil was attached to the exterior of the perforated hollow metal drum. As the drum was turned, ink was extruded through the stencil to sheets of paper fed under the drum. In 1914 Edison Rotary Mimeographs were $30 to $160, depending on features.

 

It is believed that the A.B.Dick mimeograph produced every copy of every single order of U.S. military personnel during

World War I.